


Incision

by faustish0lurve



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40k (Novels) - Various Authors
Genre: Anesthesia, Demonic Possession, Gen, Needles, Paralysis, Surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:49:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22588171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faustish0lurve/pseuds/faustish0lurve
Summary: Fabius begins the long task of improving upon perfection. Fulgrim accommodates to the best of his imperfect ability.
Relationships: Fulgrim & Fabius Bile
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	Incision

**Author's Note:**

> Set sometime after Murder and before the Interex. I fulfilled a longstanding personal goal and wrote the majority of this on little pieces of paper towel and scraps of paper at work. Continual thanks to kolosundil for her open ear.

There's a prick, and sensation slides out of place.

He can't feel his fingers. Or anything else below his neck, really. It's quite novel. The neckrest under him is warm in a metallic sort of way. The lights above pierce his eyes and flay his vision to the ceiling. The suggestion of movement at the edge of his vision is unimportant.

A thread of blood and something carnal runs under the blanket stench of formaldehyde and counterseptic. He can't place it, doesn't know how Fabius can stand the reek of the apothecarion day in and day out. Under any other circumstances he might have complained, asked for a setting less aesthetically offensive. But the anesthetic has twisted his other senses almost proportionally to his reduced sensation of pain. 

It, the anesthetic, is experimental, novel. The entire procedure is. He ignores the whispering that arrived with the first kiss of the needle. That presence is not novel.

"Fabius," he begins, partially to test his own capacity for speech, partially to silence that voice, "do remind me, what exactly are we doing today?"

It is always "we", "us", never "you". He is an active participant, regardless of physical passivity. He contributes to progress. Fabius doesn't look up. Wrist deep in Fulgrim's abdomen, a dozen intricate surgical lenses hover over his eyes. Fulgrim is aware the question should have an obvious answer, but the anesthetic makes things obnoxiously hazy.

"We are increasing neonephritic density in your oolitic kidneys. I took the initial cultures from you several decades ago, during the reconstitution of the legion."

Kidney, blood, poison. Perhaps this is the thread of scent he cannot consciously trace from his own viscera.

"Vespasian refused, then?" Fulgrim continues, unsure exactly why this is the conclusion he comes to.

"I never offered. He has been remarkably resistant, compared to Eidolon. I suppose you did choose them for their contrast." The chirurgeon moves spiderlike at the edge of Fulgrim's vision. Its sound is smooth, barely perceptible.

"Yes," Fulgrim agrees, vacantly. "I desired a contrast of form and function, I suppose."

"Oh?" Fabius' voice brightens with something like genuine interest. It's difficult to tell when Fulgrim's sight barely reaches down the slopes of his own face.

"Vespasian is truly the perfect officer, but he lacks a certain decisiveness. Eidolon compensates for that quite readily." He swears he can feel Fabius' hands and those damnable tiny claws crawling in his bowels.

"In these circumstances, would that not qualify as willfulness?"

"In whom?"

"Vespasian, clearly. Professionalism aside, he refuses to accept progress."

"I can respect his commitment to purity. A Platonic ideal, if you will." He talks without thinking, trying to overwhelm the scraping at the back of his skull. "Besides, wouldn't the implants be more refined, by the time he consents?"

"You are assuming he will eventually consent."

"I can't see why he wouldn't. He wants what is best for the legion. I would not have appointed him Lord Commander if he did not."

The chirurgeon clicks particularly loudly at that. Fulgrim has the suspicion Fabius has said something unflattering about his Lord Commander. He continues regardless, lips running to outpace the insistent presence at the selvages of his mind. 

"When you formulate an anaesthetic, am I receiving the same formulation in greater amounts, or is it totally different from what you give the legionaries?"

"It is not totally dissimilar, but the increased complexity of your metabolism muddies the formulation process. Why? Would you rather just the paralytic needle? I have considered it."

A throatless nausea wracks Fulgrim at the thought.

"No, I simply... I wondered to what extent my complexity impedes your process."

"Complexity is never an impediment. More than anything, your metabolism is strikingly novel. I've yet to find something quite so intricate as a primarch."

The words strike and ring strange. Has Fabius called him an object? A minute spike of chemical fear swirls in his head. The scraping at the back of his mind recedes some. His voice comes out a touch higher and frailer than intended.

"You make it sound as if you've examined my brothers."

"I would, if given the appropriate leave. The Angel, in particular interests me. Perhaps Angron, were he to stay still."

"Not Ferrus?"

"The substance covering his hands is interesting, yes, but that appears to be of far greater interest and application to the Mechanicum."

Fabius pauses a moment, the crisp movement of his hands stilling at the fuzzy rim of Fulgrim's vision. There's a sound of metal on metal as if Fabius has just laid down an instrument. Something comes rustling out of the deep confines of the apothecarion. The sterile-inscrutable smell shifts. It's flesh: false, strange, unnaturally clean, counterseptics and alien fluids. There might be the low hiss of a rebreather in the sensory cloud, but he smells that as much as he hears it. It grates on him either way, senses transposing.

Fabius' head stoops out of his fixed range of vision. There's perhaps speech in the clink of metal, glass, ceramite. It's not Chemosian or any proper form of Gothic. Fabius' voice sounds strange without the cadence of a familiar tongue. He could swear his Chief Apothecary sounds almost doting, which seems impossible.

"I--" he attempts, convinced he can feel the needle grinding against his vertebra. Fabius ignores him. He tenses, gritting against irrational paranoia fed by the blessing of the senses. The inarticulate moment spins, long, heavy, weighted.

The gesticulations of the chirurgeon punctuate the nauseously revolving moment. Thin fair hair and the stretched outlines of Fabius' face follow into view. Fulgrim maps his own reflection in the taut lines of flesh over bone. The transposition curses him in horrified empathy.

"What--" he attempts again, speech drifting softly from him.

"I required supplementary tissue from one of my orderlies. The implantation process is proceeding quite well. I underestimated the amount of tissue you would require."

"There's more of me?" Fulgrim asks, stupidly.

"Of course. Your geneseed is a boundless resource which benefits the entire legion. I would be stupid not to exploit it in the most efficient way possible."

The words ooze from Fulgrim with syrupy slackness. "I'm not special, then." 

Fabius laughs. The sound is alien, rattling around in Fulgrim's head, shells in an ammo box. "You are the apotheosis of the legion. I am unsure how you could be any more special."

The amusement lays unaccustomed on Fabius' face. The face itself vanishes again in a smear of image. Fulgrim's ears tell him Fabius is somewhere above his head.

"Based on your greater than expected disorientation, I will have to adjust your dosages. You are considerably less lucid than I was anticipating."

Fabius' voice roams the apothecarion, reverberating off the bulkheads like ripples in clear water. "After Eidolon I was hoping to retain a greater spectrum of consciousness in my surgical subjects."

"But I'm still awake." The pins and needles presence at the back of Fulgrim's brain disagrees, tittering in slow static.

"Yes, but you're so stoned you're useless."

Fulgrim's face retains an astounding plasticity. He frowns.

"What could you possibly want me to do?"

Fabius sighs in agreement, returning to comfortable view.

"I wanted an estimation of how much neurological function you would retain. A primarch seemed a more durable initial subject than an astartes."

Fulgrim snickers abruptly. "You didn't want to listen to Eidolon complaining."

"I was operating on his respiratory system, allowing to retain conscious control of it would seem a poor idea."

"Oh."

"Would you say the distortion of sensation is continuous?" Fabius asks, punctuated by a wet peeling sound as he resumes his work, "or does it come in waves?"

"Yes" Fulgrim replies, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. The ceiling swims in subtle waves of color.

"Which is it?" 

"It is everything" Fulgrim pronounces, a second behind himself. "My body isn't a person. Everything is small inside of me but it bleeds from me into my surroundings."

"Are you having any phantom sensation below the point of anesthetization?"

Fulgrim tenses the small section of himself under his control. No, Never. He cannot be that far out of his own control. It is impossible, unacceptable.

"I am not, no. I expect this is more akin to what dreadnaughts experience. Merely, extreme disconnection."

"Reports of phantom limbs are far from uncommon even in the current dreadnaught programs. Something about the sarcophagus setup produces a violent dissociation between the body flesh and the body mechanical. The disconnect often produces a surrogate, illusory body in the mind of the inductee. They describe the disconnect as being trapped in their own body."

Fabius catches Fulgrim's expression before the Phonecian can conceal himself.

"You are."

Fulgrim would squirm if he were able.

"Something less psychedelic, then? I could adjust your IV, make this a potentially more peaceful experience. The transition between anesthetics may be unpleasant however."

"Yes" Fulgrim relents, "whatever you think is best."

"It's a question of what you want."

"Yes, change the drip, please." The speed of his response stretches his mouth in strange and unpleasant ways.

Fabius' speech recedes again. His boots on the deck layer over that soft voice without smothering it. "As you wish." 

Fulgrim hears the rustling of tubing and the motion of Fabius' arms as he cracks open the supply cooler. Based on the metallic clatter, it's probably the chirurgeon that actually attaches the IV bag to the post. Soft flashes of violet and light move at the edge of his vision. They form the loose shape of Fabius' gauntlets and a syringe. The outlines are more suggestion than fact; Fulgrim's vision refuses to focus in any plane but the vertical.

"This should help. I will have to adjust you for a moment."

Fabius' hands on his ennervated neck is soft fire, his nerves overcompensating for an unfeeling body. That fire slides up to cup the bowl of his skull. The feeling of fingers in his hair is achingly electric. A soft noise issues from him, somewhere between a yelp and a sigh. The squeak of the metal neckrest sliding out of the way interpolates.

Dull pressure, mundane, hardly illusory, manifests at the inarticulate border between the sensate and insensate portions of his spine. Something raw and red trickles up from the illusory portion of his body. It overwhelms Fabius' touch, crushing outward from the boundary of his skull. The pin in his neck sears, inarticulate agony radiating from the point of fixation. He cannot scream beyond a breathless croak. Fabius reassures him cursorily, the words not quite forming in the fire of his head.

Fulgrim would call it falling if his body wasn't already trapped on a surgical slab. The conscious knowledge doesn't diminish the sense of plunging into an undefined void. His head remains fixed despite the crushing sensation, disconnected in radiant pain from the rest of his body. His body has sloughed off and left just his agonized head cradled in his Chief Apothecary's capable hands.

The ceiling flickers again, on and off in shades of darkness. His eyes. It's his eyes flickering. Everything sinks. His head tumbles from Fabius' grip. That voice at the back of his mind rolls forward and issues from his mouth in numb slow waves. If Fabius hears it beyond the blackness of Fulgrim's weighted eyelids he pays no response. The Phonecian hears something like music before the overwhelming pressure crushes his ears shut too.

His aberrant passenger pulls up the corners of his mouth as he embraces temporary oblivion.


End file.
